Name's Jason Thibeault. I'm an IT guy, skeptic, feminist, gamer and atheist, and love OSS, science of all stripes (especially space-related stuff), and debating on-line and off. I enjoy a good bit of whargarbl now and again, and will occasionally even seek it out. I am also apparently responsible for the death of common sense on the internet. My bad.

EVENTS

Stoplight: “Marriage license and registration please?”

Spot the logical fallacy in this Christian anti-gay-marriage spot. It should be glaringly obvious.

I just don’t see why they can’t argue against gay marriage on its own merits, and instead have to postulate a totalitarian state where gays having the right to marry results in direct, overt persecution of Christians.

No, wait, sorry, I see exactly why. Because there are no arguments against gay marriage that pertain to the merits.

I don’t see how they get from point A to point B. Or maybe I can’t even divine what their point is?

Their point is to incite fear of oppression.

They twist the, “In the eyes of the law” bit to mean, “In the eyes of the thought police.” In fact, all President Obama meant was exactly what he said: in the eyes of the law, same-sex couples should be able to marry.

They basically twist the real point, which is, “Sorry, Fundagelicals, it’s not OK for you to continue oppressing other folks,” to mean, “Halp! Halp! I’m being oppressed!”

How do they get from point A to point B? With the help of their Advanced Quantum Non-Sequitur Machine.

Ooh, the logical fallacy is Non Sequitur (arresting people who disagree with the legal interpretation that marriage is a contract between any two consenting adults, barring familial relationship closer than a certain degree that varies by jurisdiction, does not follow from legally recognizing those marriages), and it occurs at 01:16! Do I win anything?

Don’t the fundies want to be persecuted? Jesus promised them earthly persecution would earn them two-for-one coupons in heaven, or something like that. It’s in the beatitudes. Matthew 5:10. Jesus specifically praised persecution of Christians while never once mentioning homosexuality at all.

So this doomsday scenario of theirs is perfectly A-OK in Jesus’ eyes. I can think of no better way of showing respect for the beliefs of Christians than to follow them. So shove them around, spit on them, and generally treat them like dirt. It’s what their god wants.

Part of the issue is that when it comes to issues like ‘how to deal with homosexuals’, Christians are often unwilling to engage in the polite neutrality that they themselves would expect from someone else. The idea that people might be gay, accept themselves and get into relationships without being reminded every ten seconds that ‘some people think homosexuality is a sin!’ is just unacceptable to them.

There might also be some kind of end-times fantasy at work, where even the slightest hint at a loss of dominance is a key to the end of the world. I’ve talked with Christians who seem to see conspiracies behind everything meant to ensure fairness and equality.

Someone at a pub threw a mug of beer over my daughter & her legally married wife as they were walking by on the street. She was shocked because that sort of thing is uncommon here. Now I can say, “How very Christian of them.”

John H., you need either a micro pillow strapped to your forehead or a big pillow beside the computer….

Someone at a pub threw a mug of beer over my daughter & her legally married wife as they were walking by on the street. She was shocked because that sort of thing is uncommon here. Now I can say, “How very Christian of them.”

Yeah. That’s just about right.

This kind of shit pisses me off. What the fuck is the point of freedom if you can’t exercise it? I mean, almost all these fuckers talk about freedom as if it meant something really fucking personal. But when it comes down to it, they get pissed when you color your hair blue, let alone when you marry someone you really love.

It is the major fear of those who oppress others, that one day they will be overthrown and enslaved in turn. Which frequently happens simply because they refuse to be reasonable for so long.

While no revolution here will have Teh Ghey running about the streets beheading Christians, this is their fear and their fantasy. So simple equal rights for any queer folk of any lovely flavor (even those who themselves are Christians) will be regarded the as the same as if they, the TrueChristians™, were abused and oppressed.

These folks show their authoritarian instincts (along with their stupidity) by treating “Law” as if it was some kind of rule by decree rather than enacted legislation.
To be fair, it seems many police feel this way, too, but what this video is trying to suggest is that, the Prsident having made an offhand statement, that statement has legal force to allow the notoriously gay-friendly police (sarcasm warning!) to demand documents unrelated to the issue (which is only legal against Latinos, apparently) and then apply penalties if those documents are not…I dunno, in order, I guess.
I mean, is this supposed fine for being Not-Gay-Married, for Being-Straight-Married or simply for driving without havaing a marriage license in possession?
I realize these folks do not acknowledge the Constitution has any force, but this is all based on the idea that there aren’t actually any laws at all, just arbitrary decrees from whatever authority figure you happen to run into.
It’s so tough to be a persecuted majority when no one actually persecutes you. But at least you can try and make them persecute you back.

The now defunct company large hi-tech company that I no longer work for provided health benefits for employee’s life-partners, defined at the discretion of the employee – no marriage required, and same-sex couples were included. A fellow employee filed a complaint with the HR department, on the basis that the policy was harassment, since it was at odds with his personal beliefs to say that same-sex relationships have equivalent status to Christian Holy Matrimony (TM).

Wow. That didn’t even make sense. The only vaguely logical explanation is that the police officer was trolling for people to arrest for speaking out against gay mairrage rights? Then what did anything else…. Wouldn’t they just send cops to the churches with big aresting-people vans?

It’s like the realized that outlawing straight marriage is obviously not going to happen (which is what a lot of people seem to anticipate) but they didn’t want to be all ‘Look at these depraved gay homos’ so they just served up a plate of WTF.